Much more was documented in a speech to Congress by Andrew Johnson delivered on July 27, 1861. (see pages 415-435)
The Confederacy even had to modify their own constitution after open piracy against United States shipping. One violation of the US Constitution mentioned by Johnson: "no state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay"
One violation of the US Constitution mentioned by Johnson: "no state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay"
The basic flaw in Johnson's argument here is that the seceded states had withdrawn from the Union and resumed their own governance. They were no longer subject to the US Constitution. That is entirely consistent with the statements about what the Constitution meant by the ratifiers of the Constitution in New York in their ratification document [Link]:
We, the delegates of the people of the state of New York, duly elected and met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the 17th day of September, in the year 1787, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, (a copy whereof precedes these presents,) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, — Do declare and make known, —
... That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness ...
... Under these impressions, and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution, and in confidence that the amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution will receive an early and mature consideration, — We, the said delegates, in the name and in the behalf of the people of the state of New York, do, by these presents, assent to and ratify the said Constitution.
Virginia and Rhode Island had similar statements in their ratification documents.
I suspect that the Constitution would never have been ratified if it said once you are in you can't get out or you can't leave without permission of the other states that might have been oppressing you or violating the Constitution. In 1860 and again in 1861 a few Republicans in Congress proposed a constitutional amendment requiring seceding states to get the approval of other states before they could secede. They knew there was no restriction on seceding in the Constitution. The act of secession was supra-Constitutional, an act by the entities that had helped create the Constitution and delegated certain responsibilities to the Federal government in the first place.
More later. We are headed out this morning.
I don't understand the "if not before" part of your comment. Would you please explain what you mean.
FYI, here is an estimate of the number of slaves smuggled into the US illegally between 1808 and 1861 [Link]:
In 1807 the U.S. Congress passed the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, which ended large-scale importations of slaves into the United States. The law went into effect on January 1, 1808. In the eight years before the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves made the trade illegal, the United States imported about forty thousand new slaves from Africa. From 1808 until the Civil War broke out in 1861, less than a fifth of that number of slaves would be illegally smuggled into the nation.
That totals to about 8,000 slaves in 53 years, or about 150 per year. That is equivalent to maybe one ship per year slipping through. These were illegally imported slaves, typically imported in Northern ships IIRC. Were Southern states themselves behind this illegal importation or was it the act of individuals sneaking ships into backwaters to offload slaves illegally.? I do not know.
In contrast, some Northern states actually passed laws to prevent the return of states to the South, forgetting a great compromise in the Constitution that made the Constitution possible. In addition to this nullification of the Constitution by some Northern states, many individuals in the North opposed the return of fugitive slaves to their owners in the South. On at least one occasion a Northern mob killed the person seeking to return slave(s) to their owner(s).
It was the apparently unconstitutional actions of the Northern states themselves that concerned Southern leaders. Once states started seceding, a number of Northern states repealed or amended their offending laws, but it was too late to save the Union as it was.
I imagine that on occasion free blacks who were not fugitive slaves were captured in the North and taken to the South. However, about ten times as many slaves escaped as were returned. Under the Fugitive Slave Law there were Federal commissioners set up to determine if a captured person was a fugitive slave or not. If he determined to the best of his ability that the person was a fugitive slave, any laws of Northern states regarding the fugitive and his rights no longer applied. The Fugitive Slave Law was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court.